Maintenance of doors and gates

All doors and gates will require some maintenance; the frequency and type of maintenance will depend upon the nature of the door or gate and its use.  For fire-resisting doors and doors on emergency escape routes, maintenance duties are covered in the FIRE section of this web site as they are subject to specific legal requirements. 

The general maintenance duties for doors and gates of all types can be summarised as follows:

• The principal responsibility for ensuring that essential maintenance is undertaken lies with the person in control of the premises in which the door or gate is installed.  In a workplace, this is usually the employer.
• The objective of maintenance is primarily to ensure that the door or gate is safe; efficiency and convenience are secondary issues.  The question of whether a particular door or gate is in fact safe will be determined by reference to the current “state of the art”, not what may have been considered safe when the door or gate was first installed.
• Any contractor employed to carry out maintenance or repair work is legally required to ensure that their work results in a gate or door which is safe for anyone who could be affected by it.  If, having informed the person in control of the premises about the risks, it proves to be impracticable to make the door or gate safe for further use, the only recourse for the contractor is to leave the door or gate out of service.